


the Bucky type

by Prim_the_Amazing



Series: marvelous wolves [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Handlers, M/M, Psychic Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:16:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: They are a Soldier without a handler, a Hunter without someone to point her at targets. They can’t go through the rest of their lives feeling like they’re in an in between state, benched, resting, just waiting for the next mission, the next handler.They break into the small, unassuming place, and they wait in the shadows for their handlers to come home and see them.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: marvelous wolves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693294
Comments: 40
Kudos: 190
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	the Bucky type

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



Captain America, also known as James Buchanan Barnes, is a charismatic leader. The Soldier knows that there are different kinds. His long term memory is hazy and scattershot, but his life has been a routine for so long that this knowledge has sunk deep into his flesh and nestled safely inside his bone marrow where not even the chair can reach it, like the knowing of how to load a gun or hold a knife. Permanent knowledge. 

There are the efficient, cold, impersonal leaders, all clipped and factual and brutal. The inexperienced, the rookies fresh out of training, would think that these are the worst, but they’re the Soldier’s favorite kind. No bullshit. Just clear forthright orders with clear consequences for success or failure. Just business. Just focus on the goal and reaching it as quickly and optimally as possible. 

Charismatic leaders, on the other hand. The charming ones, the friendly or the passionate, the funny or the personable. Many variants. All dangerous. Charismatic leaders deal with _people._ They don’t think in cold, clear lines. They lie and lie and lie to get whatever they want, and what they want changes from moment to moment. 

They smile and say do this, but not how, and then they get mad when he magically didn’t know that. They smile and say that this thing will happen if he fails, but then they come up with something different and worse as a surprise because the surprise is a part of the punishment. They smile and say I’m sure you will do well, and then they give him an assignment that they know he cannot do because what they really want isn’t the goal, but just to punish him for some reason, some powerplay, some long term plan for in office political manuevering that he can’t give enough of a fuck to pay attention to even if he had enough brains to clearly remember things from beyond one mission at a time. 

Sometimes he succeeds at the missions he’s secretly supposed to fail, and he quietly enjoys fucking them over as the Hunter very deliberately doesn’t wag her tail and they smile and grit out _good job, Soldier._ And then they give him another mission that he’s supposed to fail, and then they just keep doing that until he finally slips and stumbles and inevitably does as they want because he needs to be perfect every single time and they only need to succeed once. The Soldier can succeed, but never win. 

Charismatic leaders lie and play games and fuck around and the Soldier doesn’t like them, even as he follows their orders as perfectly as he would a less annoying superior officer. He can tell that the Captain is one of them, because of his charming, handsome smiles in the propaganda reels that run on the television that are called ‘talk shows’ and ‘interviews’. He jokes and he touches people on the shoulder and arm like they’re his friend and not a stranger with a microphone, and the Soldier sees them get drawn into his spell, looking up at him with wide adoring smiles, _wanting_ to like him. The classic hero. 

_Not natural body language,_ the Hunter agrees critically, watching Lady Liberty on the TV screen through the shop front. 

The Captain and the Lady are standing in front of a smoldering building, and the Captain’s wolf looks particularly noble and majestic as she gazes off into the horizon, sitting next to her partner as he solemnly answers questions from the reporter. There’s literally nothing to be looking at in that direction, he’s fairly sure. She could be keeping a guard up, looking out for danger, except she’d be turning her head around far more if that were the case. She moves in the same way that the Captain does; making sure that not a single frame of this video that could possibly be isolated has them looking anything but brave and handsome and regal. 

The Captain has his kevlar hood pushed back for no good reason to reveal his perfectly tousled hair, and there’s a smear of soot on his cheekbone that looks nothing but photogenic and yet natural. _Definitely_ not like he’d turned to his wolf after smearing it onto his face and asked her how it looked before making minute adjustments before the crowd arrived. 

It sure wouldn’t be a good look for him if someone sniped a bullet right into his conveniently revealed forehead as the cameras rolled, the Soldier thinks. It’s the kind of thought that he never, ever speaks out loud. Too much initiative, more than the Winter Soldier is supposed to have. 

For some reason, the image makes unease tighten in his gut. He doesn’t want to snipe the Captain. He wants to make him put his hood back on, optics be damned. 

More of those damned instincts. The Soldier turns away from the shop front and the Captain’s fake-earnest face, and the Hunter trots after him, close up against his side, pressing lightly against his hip as they walk through the crowd. He shouldn’t be lingering in public anyways. They’re wanted by the government and HYDRA both, although he still isn’t quite used to the two not being pretty much the same thing any longer. There have been _quite_ a lot of arrests, firings, quittings of disgrace, discreet fleeings of the country, and loud proclamations that their name was put in those leaked files _deliberately_ as a malicious _hoax,_ they’re a red blooded American! Not a Nazi! They’re going to sue the Avengers for defamation and slander! 

The ones who discreetly fled the country were clearly the only ones with any brains. 

_We don’t have to follow his orders,_ the Hunter says in his mind, stubborn. He can feel how little she believes her own words, and how much it infuriates her. 

He doesn’t say anything in response, and they slip away into the crowd, a ghost. 

The ship is descending and the Captain is refusing to fight back and the Soldier has him on his back and the Hunter has her jaws around the Lady’s neck and is preparing to twist and break the bones and rip the cartilage and spill the blood in that essential place and the Captain is bleeding and the Soldier is raising his arm to kill him, to crack open his skull like an egg and scoop out what’s on the inside, like he’s supposed to. 

“Don’t,” the Captain says softly and the Soldier falters, the Hunter hesitates. The Lady whines as if in pain, except the Hunter has stopped hurting her for the first time since this fight started. 

They never hesitate. They always accomplish their goal, their task, their mission, unstoppable and implacable like a hurtling cannonball. But every single part of their bodies vibrate with this, this-- 

Order. It’s an order. That’s why every single cell of him is screaming at him to heel, to obey. That must be it. But the Captain isn’t his leader, his handler. He isn’t. _He isn’t--_

The Soldier wakes up. The Hunter pants like she’s sprinted five miles in the desert, loud and desperate. They’re squatting in a dark building, cold and dusty with the sounds of the city outside, and it’s far from the worst place they’ve ever slept. Still, these disruptive nightmares. Rememberings. 

_We don’t have to obey_ him, the Hunter insists irrationally, but they know. They know. 

Captain America had a faithful lieutenant, in World War Two. They researched him. They know. Steve Rogers, wolf brother to Marigold Rogers. Their former aliases, apparently. It’s not the first time that he’s fought for another side, stolen or borrowed or gifted like a cog that can be neatly placed within any machine. And in a way, that is right. All of the organizations and countries the Soldier has fought for and in has ultimately felt the same, past all of the window dressing and different uniforms and languages. It doesn’t matter. The Soldier isn’t sentimental, and he doesn’t betray. A gun doesn’t betray. He fights for the organization that currently owns him, with no internal conflict, not even an iota of caring. He has never had a problem with shooting a familiar face. They’re all a blur, anyways. 

But he disobeyed orders just because the Captain ordered it, didn’t he. He stayed his hand, the Hunter her fangs. They let them go. Didn’t even let them drown, dragging them out of the river through the debris with their teeth and their arms as their leathers and guns and kevlar dragged them down, heaving them onto the shore before leaving, baffled and frightened by their magical ability to make him _not_ kill. 

The Soldier looks at pictures of the Captain with his arm companionably thrown around Steve Rogers’ shoulders, their wolves curled up together like cubmates, and wonders if he had, like an idiot, let himself be pulled into the Captain’s spell as well. His dimple and his hair and his dark brown eyes-- 

Fuck, not again. Furtively, he takes care of the problem that… arises. This is another thing that’s sunk into his bones where it can’t ever be pried out of him: do this only when alone. _Never_ get caught. 

He doesn’t remember what the punishment was, exactly, which means that it varied from handler to handler, inconsistent enough not to sink into him. He does remember that it was something that the charismatic ones always got so _gleeful_ about punishing, though. 

With all of their stubbornness, they last three bitter, slow, impossible months of hiding before they finally snap and break into the Captain’s anonymous Brooklyn apartment. 

They are a Soldier without a handler, a Hunter without someone to point her at targets. They can’t go through the rest of their lives feeling like they’re in an in between state, benched, resting, just waiting for the next mission, the next handler. 

They break into the small, unassuming place, and they wait in the shadows for their handlers to come home and see them. It’s the sort of thing that the Soldier and Hunter delight in. See, they were just obediently waiting for orders. _Not_ quietly looming for hours in a spot that it will give their handlers a heart attack to spot them in out of nowhere. 

It’s hilarious every single time, and impossible to prove as anything that is petty or intentional. It doesn’t seem to occur to most of the Soldier’s handlers that he’s even capable of doing things just because he enjoys them. That’s their own fault for making him wear a muzzle that hides his expression, for prodding at the Hunter with tasers every time her tail wags. 

If the people in charge of the Soldier and Hunter are scared of them, then that’s by their own doing and they have no one to blame but themselves. 

(They blame the Soldier anyways.)

The door clicks open. The Hunter’s ears prick upwards, keen and listening. She is sitting at his side, very proper, like she should for a meeting with a handler. _Not_ prowling at the other side of the room, waiting to ambush while he’s being the distraction. He watches the slice of light cast onto the floor grow as the door opens, and then a hand reach out and flip on the light switch. 

-

Bucky has a brief, barebones conversation with Natasha over text about how his day’s been, about what’s happened. Nothing that he doesn’t mind being leaked, because while this may be a phone handmade by Stark himself to be ‘locked up tighter than a nun’s skirt, Barnes, don’t fret yourself into a snit over it’ Natasha had more than thoroughly stressed to him just how insecure modern phones are. Technology in general, really. Plus, he doesn’t really trust _Stark_ not to metaphorically peek over his shoulder at his conversations. Sure, he’s an alright guy, but he’s nosy as hell, and he… makes decisions that Bucky _wouldn’t,_ sometimes. 

And their opinions on the Winter Soldier differ just a bit. Stark says that he’s ‘working on it’, which _better_ mean that he’s seeing a goddamned therapist and not anything else. Which he should _already be doing,_ anyways. 

The possible Hydra lead that he looked into rapidly devolved into the entire building oh so conveniently burning down before he could get his hands on anything concrete, taking with it not only the suspicious shell company that he’d broken into but the other three business renting floors above it as well. He’s not really willing to put anything past Hydra at this point, but somehow he doubts that the massage parlor, small time lawyer firm, and custom order sex toy company were secret nazi fronts as well. He’d ended up helping evacuating the people there instead of chasing the person he saw running away from the scene of the crime and he’s _frustrated_ by it. Sure, he sees the necessity of it, but still. Frustrated. 

After the quick debrief, Natasha tacks on a gif of Taylor Swift pumping her fist at the end of her reply, which makes him grimace. It’s a part of their code: any gifs with blond women in them means that there hasn’t been any significant progress on the search for Steve. At this point, he’s quickly developing a Pavlovian sort of extreme dislike for Swift’s face, despite knowing effectively nothing about her except that she’s a popstar that sings a lot of love songs, probably? He’d glimpsed her on TV the other day and Wilson had asked him with real concern in his voice if he’d just spontaneously developed an ulcer. Bucky had told him to fuck off and switched the channel. 

No progress on his end on looking for Steve, and now no progress on Natasha’s end either. He and Barker had personally carried out almost a dozen victims from a burning blaze today, and it still feels like a waste of a day. Everything that isn’t taking one step closer to finding Steve feels like lost time, now that he knows that he’s out there. Which isn’t good, considering how difficult Steve is making it to find him in the first place. 

Somehow, Bucky’s not surprised that Steve’s making it as inconvenient as possible to take care of him. It’s hardly new behavior. He’ll just have to bulldoze his way past it like the opposition isn’t there at all, like in the old days. 

His hands are full of groceries, so after he fumbles through unlocking his door he lets Barker jump up onto her hind legs and drag the door knob down with her forepaws even though it’s a bad habit and it’ll leave behind scratches on the door knob and the area around it. She noses the door open, trotting into their dark flat, clearly ready to spend the rest of the night on the couch, either dwelling on Marigold or trying very hard not to think about her at all. 

Bucky turns the light on. At about the same time, the scent that shouldn’t be there registers through his link with Barker, and he drops everything he’s holding onto the floor. As Barker snarls and leaps at the figure looming in the shadows at the other end of the room Bucky dives for the gun he keeps hidden close to the doorway because he left his fucking shield behind further into the apartment after he popped in for a shower before leaving again. He really should just start carrying the damn thing with him everywhere he goes, even if it means that he never gets a moment of peace when he’s trying to buy triple ply toilet paper. 

After he’s undone the safety but before he pulls the trigger, the scent that should be there registers as a _familiar_ scent. A scent more familiar than even blood or gunpowder, that goes straight to his hindbrain. 

It’s too late for Barker, however, who’s already leaping through the air towards the intruder-- towards their best friends. She lands with a high yelp on Marigold, and Marigold _growls._ He’s surging forwards to try and help Barker get away from her because he doesn’t want to fight Steve, he doesn’t want for their wolves to bite and scratch at it each other like they _mean it--_ but Marigold lets Barker frantically scramble away from her without a fight, even if she looks pissed as hell. 

For a moment, there’s just the sound of his own rapid heartbeat and Barker cursing inside of his mind as they both stand there, tense and waiting for the moment that Steve and Marigold _move_ to try and rip their goddamned throats open. Fighting someone that you don’t want to hurt is a goddamn nightmare, especially when they’re _good._

But Marigold simply gets back up onto her paws and sits, and Steve gives him a flat, unamused stare. 

“... Sorry,” Bucky says eventually, feeling like he just spilled a drink on his date’s nice dress. He realizes belatedly that he’s still sort of holding the gun up, and hurriedly puts the safety back on and lowers it. “You startled us.” 

Steve nor Marigold say anything in reply. 

Right. 

The muzzles. 

He managed to knock Steve’s muzzle off in their first fight, before it had even occurred to him that Steve may be by some inexplicable coincidence still alive. Marigold hadn’t been wearing one herself, presumably because a wolf’s greatest weapon is their fangs. But it had been strapped onto her neck, as if ready to put on the rest of the way the second that they were out of a fight and it wasn’t _necessary_ for her to be able to open her mouth any longer. 

He imagines what it would be like for Barker to wear a muzzle, for almost every moment of the day. It would be taken off for fights, for eating, and nothing else. Would it be taken off for sleep? He doesn’t know. She doesn’t need to be able to open her mouth to talk. He imagines it. 

It would hurt, he thinks. Even if it were perfectly fitted, it would start to hurt ache and chafe pretty quickly. Steven doesn’t even take his muzzle off for fights, and he doesn’t have a layer of fur in the way between himself and the material of the muzzle. It must ache and chafe even more. 

Barker whines, very faintly, keyed into where his thoughts are straying. It’s a quiet noise, but audible to his sensitive ears in the deafening quiet of the room. He tosses the gun away in the direction of the couch, a casual throw over his shoulder without looking, the movement slow and calculated not to make Steve tense or flinch. 

“Hi,” he says, and he doesn’t know how he does it but he makes himself smile, warm and friendly and reassuring like nothing’s wrong at all. This isn’t the fucking time to lose his shit over his best friend returned from the grave and the nazis standing in his little apartment. He has to keep it together. He has to handle this situation perfectly so that Steve will _stay_ in his little apartment. He knows it isn’t going to be easy, because Steve hasn’t been easy or convenient or reasonable a day in his life. He loved-- loves that about him, though, because it’s a part of Steve, and he _loves_ Steve. 

He has to keep it together. Handle this perfectly. He smiles. 

-

The Captain is smiling, and it isn’t reaching his eyes. He’s disarmed himself, which is more of that weird fucked up behavior from the ship, letting the Soldier hit him, the Lady letting the Hunter bite her as deeply as she wanted to without biting back. Is it a manipulation tactic? Has anyone ever told the Captain that manipulation tactics have their time and place? Because the Soldier could kill him right now, right here, and no amount of social graces could save him from _that._

Maybe he’s just stupid. 

_No he isn’t,_ the Hunter reproves him. _If he were, he’d already be dead. Don’t let your guard down._

Right. He’d be dead if the Soldier hadn’t decided to drag him out of that river though, so… 

_But we_ didn’t _decide to drag them out of that river,_ the Hunter says, and he scowls, his mouth twisting behind his muzzle, because she’s right. At no point had he or she made the conscious decision to go and save them. There was no reasoning, no logic to it. They’d just done it, thoughtlessly, panicking at the thought of either of them dying. And the Captain may very well have known that that was exactly what would happen, if he were entirely helpless and dying in their clutches. He may have _known_ that some sort of-- some sort of _failsafe_ or something would kick in, and they would spare him and his wolf. 

The Soldier has always been the one to receive orders, not give them. That’s just the way the world works. But the idea of his own _body_ doing something without his permission is-- _infuriating._

 _Steady,_ the Hunter says, and he knows, he knows. He’s got to keep his shit together in front of the new handler, no matter what he says or does to him. No matter how angry he gets. 

“I’m really happy you came here, Steve,” the Captain is saying. Steve, he keeps calling the Soldier that. His alias, back when he’d originally been the Captain’s. Fine. That makes sense. There are worse codenames. He makes a mental shift, fits it into his mind so that he’ll remember to respond to it. It probably won’t stick in his mind after wipes the way Soldier does, though. That’s the Captain’s own damn fault, but he knows who’ll be getting the blame. “You can trust me with anything.” 

It’s fucking annoying when Steve gets a handler who talks to him like he’s their friend. He knows they’re not his friend. They know he’s not their friend. Who are they lying for? It makes him grit his teeth, makes him want to piss them off until they’re _honest._

He leans into that instinct just a little bit, as the Captain leaves a leading silence open for him by not saying anything in reply. That’s a familiar little way to find satisfaction in a day were he has to be around smarmy and irritating _people,_ instead of a calming solo op. Giving exactly what is asked of him, and not an iota more. Not half assing it but just… forcing them to order him to do things that he should be able to--and can-- guess for himself. 

He’s pretty sure they all just think that he’s a moron with half his brains fried away, and not just petty and spiteful. 

_You can be both,_ Hunter says dryly, safe and self contained in their private bond. He can vaguely remember a far off, distant time when Hydra (he thinks it was Hydra, but it doesn’t matter) experimented with having him share his bond with his handler and their own wolf. 

He’d made sure that it had gone badly enough for them to not want to try that again. He’d been punished, but sometimes punishments are worth it. 

“... Are you hurt?” the Captain asks, fake concern bleeding into his overly friendly tone, dampening it. “Is that why you’re here?” 

He’s here because he lost. Because he caved. Because he is the Winter Soldier and having a handler is an inevitable, impossible to ignore or avoid part of him, and this time that role is to be filled by Captain James Buchanan Barnes. 

He shakes his head, because that was clearly a question directed at him, which means that it needs to be answered. He doesn’t say _why_ he’s here, though. If he wants to know that, he’ll have to actually ask that, instead of hinting at it and implying and expecting. 

-

… Does Steve not like to talk any longer? That’s okay, if he doesn’t. Bucky’s happy to have him back in any capacity. He feels like he definitely needs to be able to communicate with him somehow, though. Is Hydra hot on his tail? Does he need a place to hide? Is he going to have to play twenty questions with him to get to the bottom of any of these questions? Can they maybe write things out instead? Or goddamned charades, he doesn’t care, whatever’s good with him, he just wants to know if Steve’s _okay._

Seated next to him, five feet away from Steve and Marigold, Barker reaches out to Steve and Marigold’s bond before Bucky can go _wait maybe that’s not the best idea._

She’s always been quicker to go for what they want than him. Almost recklessly so, really. 

-

Steve is on the roof of a building when he comes back to himself. The Hunter is a snarling, pacing thing, doing patrols around the edges of the roof. There is blood on her teeth. There is blood on his fists. Fury and fear still pounds in his blood. 

Fuck. 

Steve disobeys, sometimes. A handler gives him an order and he goes to do it but then something happens and he thinks _a better option has presented itself_ and he does that instead. A handler gives him an order and he thinks _that’s a stupid fucking order it would be way better if I did it this way instead_ and he goes to do it anyways and then he sees an excuse he can use to change his mind and do something else without checking in with them first. And maybe it isn’t really changing his mind so much as him keeping his eyes peeled to do it at the first possible opportunity. 

He _tries_ to keep it within plausible deniability, but it’s often threadbare, and he’s often punished anyways. Punished for taking the better choice, even if it worked out perfectly well, just because it was _his_ choice. Fucking stupid, all of it. 

Handlers are stupid and annoying and they punish him even when he doesn’t do stuff wrong, just differently from how they wanted it, but they’re _necessary._ They just are. He knows this in his bones. Just another inconvenient part of life that it’s impossible for him to change. 

The Captain and the Lady tried to reach out to them, with their bond. Join them. Apparently, Steve and the Hunter _dealt_ with that. That’s good, he supposes. He’d tried to tolerate it for a few weeks the first time it had happened, and it had been unpleasant enough for it to become a permanent, if hazy, memory. Like flinching at fire or sharpness or pain. He _knows_ that it’s bad to share his bond with his handler. Being punished is worth making sure that that never happens. 

Still, though. Fuck. 

He tries to remember what it was like to be punished by the Captain, what methods he preferred. He thinks he can very, very faintly remember annoyed words, but it can’t possibly be just that. It can’t just be a _talking to._ Especially if what he’s done is _maul him._

The Hunter’s thoughts graze against his, far slower to calm than him, still furious and steadily growling as she restlessly paces around and around on top of what he now recognizes as the roof of the Captain’s apartment building. 

What he’s supposed to do now is go downstairs and find his handler and face his punishment. No one has told him to do that yet, though, so he sits and waits where he is, unwilling to be helpful or convenient. He’s just a stupid soldier that can’t think for himself. How would he know to go and do that all on his own? 

He watches the skyline until the Hunter calms down enough to come and put her head in his lap. 

-

The first thing Bucky does after he clumsily wraps his hand in a wad of gauze is frantically google ‘gifs of redheads’, which is absolutely going to look fucking weird on his search history but needs must. The first result he finds is some woman on what looks like a talk show saying that blondes and brunettes shouldn’t get all of the attention, and he sends it to Natasha immediately with zero added context to make it look more natural and less suspicious for an outside observer because _he doesn’t have the fucking time right now._

On the floor, Barker keens with pain as her migraine spikes. He winces in sympathy. 

“I’m sorry, hon,” he says. “But also that was really dumb.” 

_I just wanted to talk to them,_ she whines through the residual agony of a _really_ violent telepathic bond rejection. 

“I know,” he says, because he gets it, he does. 

She doesn’t protest when he leaves her behind to follow their best friends, because she gets it too. She’d had just enough reaction time to briefly block the connection between them before Marigold had hit her mental hammerblow of _no fuck off I’ll fucking kill you bitch._ This meant that he’s in a good enough state to operate, and she isn’t. She’d only slow him down as she is right now until she recovers, and he can’t afford that. 

He’d just barely managed to get in the way of Marigold’s fangs aimed at Barker’s neck (that muzzle could come off _fast,_ apparently), which is good seeing as she hadn’t really been in a state to defend herself at the time. She’d latched on like a particularly feral lamprey, and he’d been frantically thinking of how to get her off without seriously hurting her when Steve had punched him in the face, picked up Marigold, and crawled out of the fucking window. _Not_ the one that was close to the fire escape. He’s pretty sure that he saw him climbing _upwards,_ as well. 

Wildly hoping, he jogs up the stairs and breaks the door going up to the roof. It feels like everything inside of him unclenches when he sees them there. He didn’t fuck it all up. He didn’t lose Steve again. He can still save this. 

“Hey,” he rasps. 

Steve and Marigold stand up. They look at him, just as flat and tense as before. Just as silent. 

“Sorry about that, earlier. Didn’t think it through. We just-- we just wanted to talk.” 

No response. Not even a twitch. 

“It’s okay. My bad. You don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to. It’s fine. We shouldn’t have pushed. It’s great that you just want to be near us.” It doesn’t really seem like Steve wants to be near them, but he wouldn’t be if that wasn’t the case, right? No one’s making him be here but him. He’s just… cautious. A little bit withdrawn. That’s fine. Bucky’s gonna be so patient from now on. It doesn’t matter if it’ll take a hundred more years for Steve to get closer to him than five feet. So long as he’s not with people that hurt and use him any longer. 

He’s got a feeling that he’s saying something wrong, though, because Steve’s flat stare has transformed into an outright scowl now. It really says something about him that it kind of makes him melt just because it’s familiar. That’s _Steve’s_ pissy scowl, right before he was about to try and start a fight with someone. 

There’s no one here right now to start a fight with but Bucky, and he doesn’t even have his wolf with him. That’s… fine. He’ll figure something out, if it comes down to it. For now though, Steve’s still keeping his distance. 

“Do you want to come back inside?” he asks, and that seems to be what finally makes Steve snap. 

-

Fuck it. Steve’s already in trouble. He might as well. 

-

He rips his muzzle off, his mask, and Bucky’s stomach swoops because yes, yes, that’s his face, it’s really him. He’d already known that, but he’s nowhere near tired of seeing his face outside of pictures. 

“Stop fucking around,” Steve spits, all piss and vinegar, and Bucky melts a little bit more. It’s good to see that nothing, not even Hydra managed to beat that out of him. Steve Rogers can take a fucking beating. 

“I’m not fucking around,” he says. “You can really come in if you wanna.” 

“Do you want for me to go inside or don’t you!?” he asks, like Bucky’s being completely unreasonable, absolutely infuriating. “Just say what you want! Stop making it so stupidly _complicated_ for no good reason.” 

“I… want for you to go where you want to go.” 

Marigold _snarls_ and oh her muzzle hasn’t gone back on yet, and Steve’s mouth flexes for a moment like he wants to join her.

“And _what,”_ Steve says, sounding two seconds away from trying to physically shake the desired answer out of Bucky like he’s looking for his lunch money, “is that?” 

“What do you want?” he asks, and he’s really, really lost control of this conversation. “You’re asking me that?” 

Steve nods, tight and angry and impatient. 

_Oh,_ he thinks and his chest hurts. He opens his mouth, and doesn’t know how to say the truth in a way that Steve’ll accept. He doesn’t want to scare him off, get him to stomp off not to be seen again for days, weeks, months, years, _forever._ He wants for him to stay, where Bucky can look out for him, take care of him, keep him from getting into too much trouble. 

He doesn’t want to tell Steve what to do just because he can’t remember what it’s like to be allowed to make his own decisions. He wants to be everything Hydra wasn’t. He wants for Steve to be his own person. 

But above everything else he wants to take care of Steve, and Steve’s jaw is set so tightly while Bucky tries to think of what to say that it looks like it should be creaking, and Marigold’s tail is held stiffly straight out, uncomfortable and agitated. They want something that feels solid and safe right now. Something they can understand. 

Okay. Okay. Bucky can compromise with himself and do stuff that he doesn’t really want to, if that’s what Steve needs. 

“Come inside,” he says, because that’s what’s best for Steve, it _is,_ he’s the last person in the world who would ever want to hurt him. 

And he really, really wants for him to come inside, back in Bucky’s space where he can keep an eye on him. 

Steve’s shoulders untense infinitesimally. Marigold’s lips lower back over her bloody teeth. They don’t look relaxed or happy, but Bucky has yet to see that happen in this millenium. They look, at least, not a breath away from either fleeing or fighting. 

Steve comes inside, Marigold trotting at his heels. 

-

The Captain does not order him or the Hunter to put their muzzles back on, presumably because it doesn’t occur to him that he needs to do so. Steve is a stupid soldier with no brains left, so literal and obedient and lacking in initiative or creativity on his own. He does not put his or Hunter’s muzzles back on. If the Captain wants them back on, he’ll have to remind them himself. 

Steve isn’t in the habit of being convenient. 

He doesn’t remember to punish them for rejecting and attacking him and his wolf either, and Steve and the Hunter don’t remind him. He orders them to go and clean themselves up, to eat a supper he prepares, to go and rest for the night. Simple, straightforward, forthright, just the way he prefers it. Steve had been afraid that getting clear orders from him would be like pulling teeth for the rest of their relationship with each other, except pulling teeth isn’t that hard, really. But he gives orders. He gives direction. And most of the time, they aren’t even shitty orders that he tears to pieces inside the privacy of his and the Hunter’s bond, orders that he finds the first excuse to forget or misinterpret or disobey. 

Most of the time. Sometimes, the Captain does order him to do stupid shit. Like sleep for eight hours straight, without a single cautious patrol through the apartment. He finds his way past that, when he has to. It’s strange how the Captain doesn’t seem to notice when he does do that. They usually always notice, always take exception, always try and make an example out of him. But the Captain just… seems to forget. Or not care, but that’s stupid. 

Maybe he really is just stupid. He’s had stupid handlers before, but never like this. It almost makes him want to…

(“Piss off, assholes! I’ve got your back, Buck!” 

“Thanks, but _please_ don’t break any of your bones!”)

… it makes him feel weird. 

_Definitely not the intra office political intrigue type after all,_ the Hunter says, watching their handler and his wolf quietly. Their handler is making another meal while simultaneously taking a call from someone who Steve has come to the conclusion is an agent of his that’s out in the field, going by ‘Natasha’. One would think that he wasn’t paying attention to them, except for how his wolf is very clearly sneaking glances at the Hunter, like they’re about to try and sneak up on her or something. 

_They’d eat him up,_ he agrees. 

The Captain looks over his shoulder at them, still holding the phone up to his ear, a kitchen knife in his other hand. He smiles at them, and then turns back to slicing the carrots. 

Steve still doesn’t really _get_ someone smiling so often for no good reason. It’s still pretty weird and a little bit suspicious, but… it’s not the way charismatic leaders tend to smile, he thinks. It’s not to try and manipulate him in some way. He just likes to smile for no reason at all, apparently. Whenever he lays eyes on Steve. It’s weird, it’s really, really weird, but maybe the Captain is just a strange person. 

Steve’s had way worse handlers than _strange._ Strange is tolerable and fine. 

The Captain is not a charismatic leader. But he is also not the cold kind. He has all of the warmth of a charismatic handler, without the frustrating oily cunning to go with it. He has the clear forthrightness of a cold handler, without the merciless, unforgiving brutality of one. He’s not sure that he’s ever had a handler like this. That puts him a bit on edge, dealing with something new and thus unpredictable. The Captain demands an entirely new category all of his own. Confusing, strange, foolish… in the end, he just names it the Bucky type of handler.

He keeps telling Steve to call him that, after all. He keeps (genuinely, sincerely) forgetting to do so, but he’s yet to be punished for it. 

He’s yet to be punished for anything. It’s kind of driving him crazy. It’s not that he likes to be punished, but he does like to have an idea of what’s going to happen to him when he finally makes a big enough mistake for it to be noticed. He still has no idea how the Captain disciplines. 

“Dinners ready,” the Captain says, off the phone now. “Come eat.” 

Steve doesn’t want to be punished. He doesn’t. But he needs to know. 

“Steve?” the Captain asks. “Did you hear me? It’s dinner time.” 

He looks straight at him and says, “No.” 

He looks at him blankly for a moment, and Steve waits. The Hunter’s mind is perfectly clear, quiet and waiting. They’re not supposed to fight back when they’re punished, but they can never stop themselves from preparing themselves as if they’re going to do so. 

And then the Captain smiles, as if Steve’s said something wonderful. 

“What,” he says. “Is it the peas? Do you still hate those? They’re good for you, you know.” 

He gives him a filthy glare. “I don’t want to eat your dinner.” 

The Captain grins wider. “You should even if you don’t want to.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Aren’t you hungry?” 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Okay,” the Captain says. “I guess we can eat later.” 

And then he… starts putting the food away. Even though the table’s already set, even though the food is hot. He sets the food away, and the Hunter springs up to her paws. 

_WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT,_ she howls belligerently, and Steve realizes with a start that she’s made the barest of a connection to the Lady in her urgent need to shout at them. 

The Lady’s tail starts wagging furiously immediately, loudly wapping into the Captain’s leg as her tongue instantly lols out. 

_Hi!!!!_

_This is some sort of trick, isn’t it!?_

_No no no no no I’d never ever lie to you I promise look as close as you want I promise I promise you can look at all of it_

_Liar! That’s a fucking trap!_

_It’s not! I love you, I’m so happy you’re talking to me again!_

The horrible thing is, it really isn’t possible to lie in mindspeak. She means all of it. The Hunter sneezes with confused outrage at this preposterous but undeniable truth. 

He looks up at the Captain, who looks like someone’s hit him upside the head. The Lady prances three excited steps towards the Hunter, and then two hurried steps back like she abruptly remembers that staying out of throat ripping range is a good idea. 

“You’re a really fucking weird handler,” he grumbles. But finally, one that he doesn’t utterly fucking despise, somehow. Maybe he should’ve realized that it would take a handler that doesn’t mind being disobeyed when he makes stupid fucking orders. It just hadn’t occurred to him that something like that could even exist. 

He gets up to eat dinner. 

The Captain blinks. “I’m a what?”


End file.
